


Never Pure (You Know Me)

by SparklyFiend



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Period Appropriate Homophobia, Thanksgiving, fluff with a mild slice of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-23
Updated: 2014-03-23
Packaged: 2018-01-16 19:11:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1358695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SparklyFiend/pseuds/SparklyFiend
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky hates the Fall, or Three times Bucky saved Steve one Autumn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Pure (You Know Me)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [myherodrowning](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=myherodrowning).



> Written during the Christmas SteveBucky exchange a couple of years ago for myherodrowning; they mentioned liking Sigh No More by Mumford and Sons, which is where the title is from.
> 
> Oh, and despite this being a Thanksgiving fic, there is precious little turkey.

Bucky was not a fan of Fall. Statistically, Fall was terrible. As a kid, Fall had meant going back to school, Coney Island shutting down for the season. Fall meant his mom dying. Fall meant his dad starting drinking again.

As an adult, Fall meant everything started getting cold and wet, the construction jobs disappeared like frost under hot water, and Steve started getting sick.  
So far this year, they had to leave their apartment when the ceiling fell in and Steve caught pneumonia. All before November.

He dreaded to think what might happen before it finally got around to Thanksgiving.

 

___

He got canned three days before his birthday. Of course he did. Bad luck came in threes, and Bucky supposed that ever since Steve had got sick, he’d been wondering what else could go wrong.  
Steve getting sick - sicker than usual, at least - is why Bucky got canned, in the end; too much time off trying to look after him, and one request for an advance on his pay to take Steve to a doctor had led to Mr Jacobs telling him there was just no more room for him on the East 57th crew, and those are your wages and thank you very much.

Bucky wasn’t in the mood for feeling grateful, and took his pay with a tight smile before storming down the sidewalk like he was trying to escape a wild dog, mouth bent into a grimace that the nuns at the orphanage would’ve told him would stick.

Not that Bucky had listened to the nuns at the best of times, and nothing about what had happened counted as the best of times. Bucky was just in the mood where he wanted to punch something.

Bucky didn’t get into many fights - not compared with the amount of fights he ended up wading into because of Steve. The difference was that Steve fought for what he thought was right, whereas Bucky fought for what he believed in.

Bucky didn’t actually believe in much, but he believed in sticking up for the little guy. Sometimes he was the little guy, and sometimes it was someone else. Sometimes, just rarely, it was someone that wasn’t Steve.

That was probably how he managed to walk home from the East 57th gang for the last time via a bunch of kids picking on a skinny scrap of a boy in a yarmulke, and why he stopped rather than passing it by. It was almost certainly why he managed to rip the shirt of the oldest boy there after he unfurled a torrent of filth at the poor kid. It was most likely why he snarled at the little bastard that he wasn’t afraid to send him home to his mama with a shiner, a loose tooth in his front pocket and a lesson in not being a scumbag.  
And it was definitely why he somehow ended up walking the younger boy home to his grandparents, and accepted a bowl of borscht and - and Bucky would never understand how this one happened - a job at their diner for his trouble.

 

___

“I still can’t get over this. This is not the kind of thing that happens to normal people, Buck,” Steve said as he sat in the diner a month later. “This is crazy!” he added, his mouth full of pancakes.

“We’re not normal people, Rogers, wash your mouth,” Bucky replied lightly, “and lift your elbows.” Steve obliged, and Bucky swept a dishrag under him. “I don’t know why Mrs Lovitz offered me this job, but eat your pancakes and thank your lucky stars.”

“Call me Esther, James!” Mrs Lovitz called from behind the grill. “And Steven, be glad I offered him this job, it means I get to fatten you up. You’re nothing but bones!”

“Call me Bucky, Mrs Lovitz,” Bucky called back. “And there’s nothing wrong with Steve and his bones.”

“Psch,” the older woman scoffed. “He’s a good boy, he needs meat on those bones. Eat some more, Steven,” she added absently, as Steve drank from his coffee cup and pretended he wasn’t really in the room.

Esther reminded Bucky of the kind of grandmas you read about in books - little, plump and kind, pockets full of candy. Bucky’s grandma had died when he was only five, and always made him recite the Bible to her. Her pockets never contained candy. (Bucky wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d contained nettles.)

“I really do eat plenty, Mrs Lovitz. Thank you for the pancakes, I’ve gotta get to work.” Steve slurped down the last of his coffee, waved at Bucky and bobbed his head at Mrs Lovitz.

“He’s a good boy,” Mrs Lovitz said softly, as she turned another batch of pancakes out onto the griddle, the hiss-spit of batter filling the air. “He needs looking after, James.”

“I know, Mrs Lovitz. I got it,” Bucky said softly, scrubbing at the countertop absently as he watched Steve walk up the road towards the courthouse.

 

___

To the shock of most dames Bucky tried to set Steve up with, and nearly everyone else besides, Steve was a good worker, conscientious and always dedicated to working when he wasn’t dedicated to trying not to die. Steve could always be found working one full time job, along with a couple of other gigs on the side when money was a little tight. He worked down as a court artist at King’s Court, sketching the neverending rogues’ gallery of Brooklyn, drew portraits of couples down at the Zoological Gardens, and modelled for his art teacher in exchange for lessons.

*

_"Class, you will never see bones like this anywhere outside of a skeleton," Steve's teacher had smirked one day last year, as Steve stripped his shirt and pants off, leaving him sitting in shorts in a freezing cold studio in the middle of November. Bucky was sitting in at the back of class - as he did occasionally when the heating was off and the nights were cold (“just don’t make a nuisance of yourself, Barnes”) - and held back a snarl. He liked Steve's bones just fine._

_  
He dropped his gaze back down to his canvas and started sketching. He'd known the curves and lines of Steve's torso since they were nine years old, and suddenly shirtless or not, Bucky didn't need a life model to draw what he saw when Steve was the subject matter. He lost himself in trying to capture the detached look on Steve's face. He was no artist, but he figured if he couldn't draw Steve well, there was no hope for him._

_  
"This is very affectionately drawn," the professor murmured with a spike of dislike in his voice. Bucky frowned, and glanced at the clock, surprised to realise that half an hour had passed. "Very affectionately drawn indeed," the professor continued, drawing Bucky's attention back to the older man leaning over his left shoulder._

_  
"That some kind of problem?" Bucky asked. "I thought empathy with your subject matter was important."_

_  
"You wouldn't empathise with a bowl of fruit," the other man said snidely. "And this goes beyond mere empathy, this is..." The man tailed off, screwed his face up in distaste. "Sometimes art is allowed to be ugly, Mr Barnes."_

__  
"I'll make sure to show up for the class where you're modelling in your shorts, then," Bucky said hotly. He snatched the page off his sketchbook, gathered his pencils and stormed out of the class with all the grace of a hurricane.  
___

_  
"You didn't need to leave on my behalf, you know, Buck," Steve said later, finding Bucky leaning against the wall and smoking his way through his third Winston in a row._

_  
"I didn't leave on your behalf, Stevie," Bucky answered, falling instep with him. "I kicked up a ruckus on your behalf. Your professor's a slimy piece of work."_

_  
"Piece of work or not, he gives me free lessons," Steve shrugged._

_  
"He's an ass," Bucky insisted. "I know you want the lessons, and that's fine, but I'm not gonna sit in and listen to him telling me to treat you like a goddamn bowl of fruit." He took another drag from his cigarette and pushed his hair off his face. "Just pisses me off to hear someone talk about you like that when you're doing them a favour, that's all."_

_  
"Let me see what you drew," Steve asked after a few minutes of relative silence, stopping under a streetlight._

_  
Bucky grumbled, but pulled his portfolio - well, Steve's old portfolio - free from under his arm. "S'not finished or anything," Bucky excused it as he pulled it loose from the sheaf of papers inside. "I got too hot-headed to finish it." He handed it over to Steve, and hated himself for the nervousness that flared up as his friend cast an appraising eye over the drawing._

_  
"I don't look this good," Steve said automatically._

_  
"Oh, come on. Don't come out with any of that, just critique it like you would any other piece," Bucky went to light up another cigarette, before stilling his fingers as Steve grabbed them and dragged them down to the paper._

_  
"Well, I uh," Steve laughed, "in an ideal world, I have two arms, Buck," he grinned as he dragged the pads of Bucky's fingers over the blank space on the paper where Steve_ would _have had an arm if Bucky had finished up his sketch. Bucky dug an affectionate elbow into Steve's ribs. "And you've put too much shadow on my left leg, it doesn't match up with the rest of my left side, but..."_

  
_"But?" Bucky pressed. Steve's fingers were still holding his._   
  


_"I don't look this good, Buck. We all know I'm just bones," Steve said it so plain, so matter of fact and it twisted Bucky's gut._   
  


_"Well, this is how I see your bones," he said, trying for flippant and accidentally landing on earnest instead. "I look at you, and this is what I see."_

_  
"Except with two arms, right?" Steve asked, looking up at Bucky with a small smile. He squeezed his friends fingers softly._

_  
"Except with two arms," Bucky affirmed, and pulled his fingers loose. "We should get home. It's cold. I can make us soup,” he suggested. He draped an arm over Steve’s shoulders and gave them a quick squeeze._

_  
“Soup sounds good,” Steve agreed, sidling a little closer to Bucky’s warmth._

 

*

Bucky, when he wasn’t slinging hotdogs onto the grill and wiping down the sides, mostly daydreamed while staring out of the window onto Atlantic Avenue. As a kid, he never thought he’d be a grill cook; but as a kid, he’d thought he’d either be a cop or Buster Keaton and that hadn’t worked out so far, so he supposed he was coming up even.

When he and Steve had been kids at the orphanage, when Steve had been sick, they’d cuddled up on the bottom bunk that they shared, read their way through Little Orphan Annie and Tintin comic books, and spent most of their time hoping that if they didn’t find a mysterious benefactor, they’d discover buried treasure in the back yard.

(They found women who wanted cute little six year olds, and bottle tops, mostly. One time, they found a five dollar bill on Coney Island: they rode the Cyclone until Steve got sick, and drank Cokes on the beach watching the sun go down.)

When they got a little bit older, and Steve got a lot sicker, they’d still curl up on the bottom bunk, whether the nuns liked it or not, and Bucky would read Steve _Daddy Long Legs_ , because they still wanted a mysterious benefactor who would get them away from cheap blankets and flea bites.

When they were older still and living in their thin walled apartment over a dry-cleaners, Steve had been delirious with fever and told Bucky that he wouldn’t mind a Daddy Long Legs to save him, not just be a benefactor. Bucky had just kissed his hair and changed the flannel on his head because he thought Steve was _dying_ and really, there was nothing else he’d do.

When Steve’s fever had broken, and Bucky had mulled it over a few days later, he figured the only problem he had with Steve wanting a Daddy Long Legs was that it meant that Steve didn’t want _him_. That was something new, and a little scary, and for the longest time, he didn’t let himself think about it unless he was drunk, and occasionally when he was alone late at night when his hands slipped below the covers.

Even the longest times pass, though, and Bucky found himself staring out of the window at work more and more as he thought about it. He was twenty-one, countless girls had come and gone, and Bucky had been in love with Steve in one way or another for longer than he hadn’t, and that just was what it was. The nuns would have told him he was going to hell, but the nuns had taught him that marriage was the only proper way to show love, and the bruises on his cousin’s face had shown him that wasn’t true.

“Order up, James - two Coneys with wings,” Mrs Lovitz called through the serving hatch.

Bucky blinked himself back to Earth and slung two hot dogs on the grill. Things might not have been how he imagined them as a kid, but that didn’t mean they were bad either.

 

___

“Go home, bubula, it’s Thanksgiving tomorrow.”

“I’m already gone, Mrs Lovitz,” Bucky answered, flipping the sign on the door to read ‘closed’. “Happy Thanksgiving, Esther,” he added, tipping his hat to the older woman as he closed the door behind him.

Bucky didn’t tend to care much for Thanksgiving - it still meant Fall, Bucky still hated Fall, and therefore he was mainly thankful when the whole holiday was over. The Friday following Thanksgiving meant Winter, and he was always thankful for that.

He pulled his collar up around his neck, and flipped a cigarette into his mouth as he walked up Flatbush towards the courthouse. It was cold and grey, and drizzling gently as he turned the corner onto Adams Street.

Bucky almost wished it would snow. At least snow looked pretty. There was nothing pretty about rain. He folded his arms and took shelter under one of the trees lining the sidewalk, waiting for Steve to finish work.

If there was one good thing about Thanksgiving, it gave Steve a day off work, a day away from the Harlem Indecency case he was currently working.

“They’re just men like me,” Steve had said unhappily into his beer last week. “Do you know how the jury look at them, Buck?” he’d asked, and Bucky had just wrapped an arm around him, and rubbed his shoulder softly.

Bucky thought maybe he should have said something.

He took a drag on his cigarette now instead, watching as somber men in suits filed out of the doors, and scowling as he heard heckling from a man across the street.

His scowl fell as he saw Steve slink out of the courthouse, gave a small wave as the blond looked up, looking exhausted. Steve definitely needed a day away from the courtroom. If it wasn’t for what happened every time he got sick, Bucky would definitely wish a cold on him, just for an extra few hours of peace.  
“Hey!”

Bucky turned to see the man who’d been cat-calling shouting at Steve. He frowned and stubbed out his cigarette as he started to make his way over.  
Not quick enough.

“Hey!” the stranger called again, closing the distance between himself and Steve with three short strides. “You’re one of the sodomites, aren’tcha?”

Steve flinched.

“You’re one of the sodomites they’re trying for being unnatural!” the man crowed, stepping up into Steve’s space, toe-to-toe and looking down on him by at least a foot.

“No, actually,” Bucky answered, breaking into a near run to get between Steve and this bastard. “He’s not one of the sodomites.” He nudged Steve aside and pushed up into the punk’s space, meeting his angry gaze with one that was furious.

“I saw him leave the courthouse. I can see him now. Man like that’s not natural. Man like that’s a goddamn invert,” the mook spat, eyes narrowing as he looked back across at Steve.

Bucky saw red. “Nah, you see - he just works there,” he smiled, all sweetness and innocence. “Show them your badge, Stevie.”

Steve, still frowning, pulled his badge out of his jacket and flipped it open.

“So,” Bucky continued, “you shouldn’t judge on appearances, because he’s not an invert.” Bucky smiled again, before reaching up and grabbing the son-of-a-bitch by his tie. “The interesting thing is, though,” he hissed, pulling the guy closer, “I _am_ a goddamn invert. So this is from me,” he pulled the guy down, pressed their mouths together and let his teeth sink deep and messy into his lower lip. He bit down until he tasted blood, then bit down again for good measure and slammed his fist into the bastard’s stomach. “And that’s from Stevie. Now stay the fuck off Adams Street.”

He wiped his mouth off with the back of his hand, wiped his hand clean on the slimeball’s shirt, then turned around to see if Steve was okay.

Of course, _of course_ he didn’t see the meathead’s friends walking up behind him. He felt the bottle break over his head before Steve had time to finish shouting whatever warning he was trying to get out.

His last thought before he hit the asphalt was _’fuck the Fall_.’

 

___

“You’re an idiot,” Steve told Bucky, as he sat him down on the bed, passing him a bottle of whiskey and two codeine pills as he started sewing up the cut on his temple. “Goddamn idiot.”

“You’re welcome,” Bucky mumbled back around the mouth of the bottle, completely unsurprised because Steve had _never_ been able to take defense graciously, even, apparently, if it involved Bucky headbutting the sidewalk in order to defend his honor. At least, that was what he assumed, because his memories of the last three hours were pretty damn hazy at best. “How the hell did you manage to get me home, Stevie?”

“Bastards were scared off when you went down like that. I managed to get you walking as far as Henry Street, then dragged you the rest of the way” Steve shrugged. “You’re heavier than you look, you know.”

“Sorry,” Bucky winced as the needle pierced his skin. “Except for all the ways I’m not. Am I gonna look okay? I don’t want to be going around town like Frankenstein.”

“Frankenstein’s monster,” Steve answered automatically, finishing the stitches and squinting at the line of cotton.

Bucky scoffed, before frowning at the pull of the thread against his face.

“You’re okay,” Steve appraised, bringing his hand up to cut the thread. “You’ve got a black eye, split lip,” he traced his hand down the side of Bucky’s face, resting it just under the swollen side of his mouth. “You didn’t have to do that, Buck,” he said softly.

“Bastard was gonna make 98 pounds of bruises out of you, Steve, I had to do something!” Bucky protested automatically, but he found it hard to put much heat behind it, because Steve’s thumb was still lingering at the corner of his mouth.  
“Didn’t have to call yourself an invert,” Steve muttered, looking away.

Oh. That.

“Didn’t have to, sure,” Bucky agreed, slowly.  
“I know what people say,” Steve continued, talking to his shoes, “but you don’t have to tar yourself with the same brush just because you’re friends with me.”

“People thinking I’m like you ain’t no slur,” Bucky frowned, reaching out and tilting Steve’s chin until the blond met his eyes. He sighed, balled his fist against his thigh, and forced himself to carry on, because he didn’t know if this was right, but he knew it was what he believed. “And I think I might be in love with you. So.”

Silence fell. Bucky did his best to keep breathing.

“That makes it a little different,” Steve admitted, sounding a little stunned. “That makes a lot different, actually.”

“Not too much different?” Bucky asked, because Steve sounding stunned was okay, Steve sounding stunned wasn’t Steve storming out of the apartment, but it didn’t mean he still didn’t have another fist coming his way. Bucky had had enough fists coming his way for one day.

“Not too much,” Steve agreed, leaning in and brushing his lips against the corner of Bucky’s mouth. “Get some sleep, Buck.”

And Bucky would have argued, would have said that, really, they weren’t done here, they were _so_ far from done here, but between the whiskey and the codeine, his head was on the pillow before he managed to say anything, and he was passed out before Steve had managed to turn the lights out.

 

___

“Happy Thanksgiving,” Steve called out as Bucky stumbled from his bedroom into the kitchen. “That is one hell of a black eye,” he added, cracking eggs into the skillet and sounding far too cheerful for Bucky’s liking.

Bucky grumbled something in reply. He wasn’t wholly sure that it counted as speech, but his mouth was swollen, his brain felt like wool, and it was still Fall. He figured he got a pass on that one. “I’m thankful for yesterday being over,” he tried again. “I’m thankful for food,” he added, looking over at the stove.

“You feeling alright?” Steve asked, plating up eggs and toast. “You slept for twenty hours, it’s practically tomorrow.”

“My face feels like a twisted ankle, but I’m okay,” Bucky managed, slumping down into one of the chairs at the dining table.

“Last night you said you might be in love with me?” Steve continued in the same conversational tone, putting the plate down in front of him. He sat down in the chair opposite and fixed Bucky with a look.

“Yeah,” Bucky agreed, rubbing a hand over the unbruised parts of his face. Bucky fixed Steve with a look of his own and ate a forkful of eggs while he waited for the other shoe to drop.

“You still might be in love me today?” the blond asked. He looked nervous. Bucky wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

“It’s gonna take more than a knock to the head to change that,” Bucky shrugged. “It’ll be the same tomorrow,” he added with a small smile, bumping his foot gently against Steve’s under the table.

“You see,” Steve blurted, words rushing into each other, “I actually _am_ in love with you. So you can’t only might be.” Steve paused, stared down at his shoes and shrugged. He muttered the rest of his sentence to the carpet, rather than to Bucky. “Because I don’t know what I’ll do if you wake up and notice you’re not.”

 

“How about,” Bucky suggested, getting out of his chair and walking around to Steve’s side of the table, “How about I tell you I might be in love with you today, but I’ll definitely be there tomorrow?” He crouched down by the side of Steve’s chair and took Steve’s hand between his, running his thumb over knuckles. “Because I’ve been teetering on that line for longer than I can remember.”

“Tomorrow’s winter,” Steve said with a small smile, and if Bucky’s pulse evened out to see that, it was probably better if he didn’t mention it. Steve always made fun of him for being soppy with dames. “Things that happen in winter are always better, right?”

“Damn straight,” Bucky agreed, still rubbing his thumb over Steve’s knuckles. He leant up against the chair and pressed his lips softly against Steve’s. “Happy Thanksgiving?”

“Thanksgiving’s still fall,” Steve murmured against Bucky’s mouth. “You hate the goddamn fall. Happy winter.”

“That sounds better,” Bucky agreed, “happy winter.” He paused, then grinned as he glanced back across the hallway to their bedroom. “I tell you what, Steve: I have got a hell of a lot of plans for the winter.”


End file.
